Precognition is defined as the ability to sense future events psychically. Precognition can come in a variety of forms - scenes from the future unfolding in dreams or visions, a prediction given by a disembodied voice, or even a sudden hunch that something is going to happen. Sometimes the feelings are undefined of mental or physical stress before a disaster. The unpleasant side of precognition, the forbodings of deaths, assassinations and catastrophies is called a premonition.

Premonitions are usually brought on by an emotional link to those who will be affected by what happens. A person may have a premonition of his own death or misfortune or of those that will effect friends or relatives. Such examples have been recorded all through our colorful history, one such example is that of an inscription on a tomb that forshadowed the assassination of Julias Caesar. The inscription, written in Greek was found in a tomb in the Roman colony of Capua just before thee assassination. The inscription read: "When once the graves of Capua are brought to light, then a branch of the Julian House will be slain by the hand of one of his kindred." Caesar was also forwarned by the soothsayer Vestricius Spurrina to "beware the Ides of March (March 15th)." Caesar himself is reported to have drempt on the night before his murder that he was taken to heaven and greeted by Jupiter, while his wife Calpurnia dreamed that he had been stabbed to death and lay bleeding in her arms.

Records of premonitions of natural disasters are reported in all cultures and countries and in all languages but they do not necessarily come true. It is theorized that fear and hysteria can generate many false premonitions. One example of this is the April 1969 prediction by many psychics that California would sink into the sea, a belief triggered by Edgar Cayce's predictions of cataclysmic disasters during the 40 year period from 1958 to 1998. This can also be seen in from predictions of the beginnins of the new millenium and the apocolyptic predictions made for the end of the world. Premonitions of natural disasters should not be ignored, but neither should they be cause for hysteria. Generally, the more cosmic and global the disaster predicted, the less likely it is to happen. Disasters on a much smaller scale, however, may sometimes be sent in dreams or visions as warnings.

A subliminal premonition is one that does not arise to conscious awareness. many people, for example, cancel plane or train reservations, often at the very last moment without knowing why and save themselves injury or death. There were many such cancellations before the Titantic sailed. Parapsychologist W. E. Cox compared the number of passengers on trains during ordinary runs with those on the days accidents occured and found that in some cases, the cancellation rate was as high as 600% more on the days the accident occured.

Premonitions happen any time of the day or night but mostly in dreams or during other altered states of consciousness, these are the twilight periods between sleeping and waking up, periods of relaxation or daydreaming, or when one is quietly meditating. The Central Premonitions Registry in New York City states that premonitions may start as vague warnings, then grow in intensity with details gradually filling in and finally reaching climax about 2 weeks before the disaster occurs. There are exceptions to this factor and they depend on the strength of the emotional link between the psychic and the future event. Dr. Hans Bender of the University of Freiburg, Germany reported one of his most striking cases being the German mother of an infant boy who drempt in 1919 that she was searching for the body of her son in the sand. The dream kept coming back in the form of a nightmare as the boy continued to grow. During World War II, her son died in a French concentration camp and was buried in the dunes near the sea fulfilling the prophesy she had drempt over the years.

Unpleasant premonitions seem to far outnumber the other kind. The central Premonition Registry receives 3 times as many forecasts of unhappy events as of pleasant ones. It is possible that the dramatic nature of death and disaster makes a greater impact on the mind and stick more then the pleasant kind. People do, of course, dream of good fortune coming their way. There are many recorded dreams of money, romance, gambeling as in lottery numbers or that winning team or horses and other such positive discoveries as in the case of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, written in 1726 where he wrote that astronomers in this fictional land of Laputa said that Mars had 2 satellites, Phobos and Deimos. The description of the moons were later verified by the Martian missile probes by NASA and strikingly accurate down to the fact that Swift said Phobos traveled 3 times as fast as Mars itself, an unusual fact known by astronomers. This fact alone was not verifiable until 1877 by astronomer Asaph Hall, 150 after the book was written by Swift.

Premonitions seem to come in as many different ways as ESP does- taste, touch, sound, smell and hearing. There are many recorded cases of psychics "seeing" future headlines, articles and photos. Future television and radio braodcasts are also highly reported. Any or all senses may be involve in psychic contanct with the future, just as in the present. In one case, a woman watching a movie suddenly "smelled" an odor she remembered from her college days in a biology class. The smell lasted for 15 minutes until another film came on in which the character opened a bottle containing a specimen of fish and made an aweful face. That raises the question as to why we receive premonitions. Most cases suggest that premonitions may serve as a warning, in which one is able to prevent the premonition from manifesting and in other cases attempts to prevent a dream premonition from coming true were not successful. There are still a great many unanswered questions to be solved in this field.

Precognition today is proved through premonition bureaus that receive forcasts through the mail and are later cross referenced with the world news. Laboratory testing for precognition such as those at the Meimonides Medical Center, as well as the observations of psychicatirsts and other researchers, who can match the precognative dreams of a patient or subject with a later event are also heavily relied upon. Parapsychologists also make close and careful investigations into the predictions and premonitions after a disaster has occured. This can be seen in current times with the police paying attention to anonymous calls into hotline numbers in cases of missing childred and other "wanted" instances. The validity of a premonition can be established after it comes tru by asking certain questions to rule out coincidence or fraud: was the event unlikely to occur - that is, it could not be inferred from facts known in the present? Do the details of the prediction and the disaster closely match? Was the prediction made within a short time of the event? Were there witnesses and written evidence such as diaries and dream journals? The time factor can be discounted if the other criteria are met.

The Central Premonitions Registry has several goals: To strengthen the case for precognition by having recorded forcasts that can be cross refferenced with later events: to serve as an early warning system and prevent future tragedies when enough premonitions are received that point unmistakeningly to the same potential disaster; and to give as many new psychics a medium to develope as possible. The Central Premonitions Registry accepts only premonitions of public interest such as those of a natural or mechanical disaster, assassinations, deaths of prominent public figures, plane or train crashes, space flights, political predictions and other such newsworth events, good and bad alike. If you would like to read more about the Central Premonitions Registry and their research or to report a premonition you have had, you can find them at "http://mainportals.com/precog.shtml".